


Into the Spider's Lair

by junko



Series: 'Tails' of Zabimaru [11]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does the zanpaktou instructor at Academy have anything to teach Renji about Zabimaru?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Spider's Lair

During lunch in the mess hall, Kira was shaking his head seriously, “Sometimes I worry that you’ll be dead before graduation.”

“We’re all dead, Kira,” Renji said, trying to find a way to eat that didn’t hurt his bruised jaw.

“You know what I mean,” Kira said grumpily. Renji had hoped to distract him off topic with that comment. But, after Kira chewed a bit more tuna, he shook his head again and clucked his tongue like a mother hen, “Good gods, look at you. Who would have thought that skinny, completely boring professor had it in him to be so rough?”

“I had it coming,” Renji said with a shrug. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as it looks. He had to make me an example, didn’t he? The whole class heard what I said. So he hit me where people could see.”

Kira shuddered. “This is why I can _never_ get in trouble. The abuse would shame me too much. I’d be mortified to walk down the hall looking like that, with everyone knowing.”

“Yeah, well, you get used to it,” Renji said. “Besides, I look like this after zanjitsu, too.”

“I guess that’s true.” Kira went back to eating for a moment before adding, “Still. You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself, Renji. Some teachers are just never going to get past surface appearances. Anyway, you’re the idiot who tattooed his _face_ over the summer. You’ve got to expect a little blow back.”

Kira, like everyone who’d talked to him after his outburst in ‘Zanpaktō: Theory and Mediation Practices,’ assumed Renji’s ‘fuck that shit’ was a commentary on having been placed in the back of the room because he was from Inuzuri. It was too complicated to explain the truth, so he let most people believe it. Still, Kira’s little lecture irritated Renji. “You know, there are other students with face tattoos.”

“Yeah, Renji, but you’re no Shūhei Hisagi. One internship does _not_ make you a seated officer in the Court Guard.” Kira chewed thoughtfully, and continued, “Besides, Hisagi is much better looking than you. And more well-mannered.”

Renji shoved Kira so that he fell off the end of the bench onto the floor. He hit with a surprised “Oh!” and a thump. Then, Renji got up to bus his tray. 

“You know, it’s stuff like this that gets you in trouble,” Kira said, picking himself back up. People had looked up at the commotion, though, as soon as everyone recognized who was involved, no one seemed concerned that there’d be a real fight. “You should curb your temper.”

“Shut up, Kira. I know, alright? I know.”

#

Despite what he told Kira, by the end of the day Renji was getting pretty tired of all the half-whispered comments and pointing behind hands like he couldn’t see them. Now, he stood in front of sensei’s door, and snarled at the name printed there. It was just about as boring and common as his lectures: Nakamura. 

“So,” Nakamura said, opening the door to Renji. “You took your beating and you’ve come to serve in my office _on time_? Given your earlier behavior, you surprise me, Mr. Abarai.”

Renji grit his teeth, but nodded. “I want to graduate, don’t I?”

“You’d be one of the few from Inuzuri.”

“So I’ve heard, sir,” Renji managed to say without too much sarcasm or the addition of ‘at least once a damn day.’

“Well, you’d best come in and we can get started.”

#

Academy paperwork wasn’t really that much different from the kinds of things he’d done at the Thirteenth all summer. Being in Nakamura’s cramped, tiny office, however, was nothing like Ukitake’s expansive, pleasant division. The addition of Nakamura’s zanpaktō, Kuroi no Kumo, added a certain… creepy, uncomfortable air. If the zanpaktō had eyes, Renji would have sworn hers were on him constantly, tracking him like prey as he filed and sorted paper.

“She bothers you, my Black Spider, doesn’t she?”

_Totally_. “Not at all,” Renji lied.

“She tells me she doesn’t like snakes. Care to elaborate?”

Renji looked up from the articles he was sorting. His eyes jumped instantly to zanpaktō hanging in her shiny, black sheath on the wall above sensei’s head. “You’re talking to her right now?”

“I am.” Nakamura said, coming up from behind him to add more to Renji’s pile. He completely destroyed the alphabetical arrangement Renji had been making. “So tell me, Mr. Abarai. Why does my zanpaktō think you’re a snake?”

“I don’t know,” Renji said, starting the re-ordering all over again. “With all due respect to the lady spider, I think she’s reading me wrong. What she’s worried about is just a snake’s tail; the rest belongs to something else entirely.”

“Oh?” The professor sat down in his chair and steepled his hands in front of his mouth. He regarded Renji across his desk for a long moment, and then said, “She still seems to think this snake of yours could bite her.”

Renji considered, as he put the last piece in place. He stood up to file this lot before sensei could add more and mess it up again. “I suppose she’s right at that, though I don’t know how, given that I have no idea where he is right now.”

“Ah, ‘he’ again,” said Nakamura. “I thought we might be talking about all that.”

Renji wasn’t sure what to say, considering he thought maybe he’d revealed too much already. So instead, he continued to work on filing. He found yet-another abandoned tea bowl on the top of the cabinet. He took a moment to add it to growing pile by the door. Did Nakamura ever finish his tea?

“You leave me with a riddle, Mr. Abarai. What has as a snake’s tail but isn’t a snake?”

Renji kept his face turned away. He could feel a slight blush reddening his neck. Renji didn’t usually give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him, especially someone like Nakamura who’d seemed to have made up his mind already based on Renji’s background, but the nue was a piece of his very soul. He was never sure how he was supposed to feel about that. At least he’d met someone else with a demon zanpaktō, and, technically, Kyōraku had two to deal with. If Kyōraku had any shame about having a double-demon soul, he never showed it. Though… there were all those rumors of his drinking. Maybe that’s how he dealt with it, by just staying drunk enough not to think too hard about it all.

Renji didn’t really have the luxury of spending his days at Academy blind-drunk. He was going to have to decide what it meant to him. He looked over his shoulder at Nakamura, who was still watching him over his folded hands. “Does it ever bother you, sir? To have an insect, I mean?”

“As opposed to a demon?” Nakamura smiled knowingly, “Why should it? It’s not something I have to love about myself, just something I need to be able to master.”

_'Not something I have to love about myself…'_ that made a kind of sense. It wasn’t like Renji didn’t have other things—things he’d done to survive—that he’d stuffed into a box in his mind that was labeled ‘Forget This Shit ASAP.’ 

But that wasn’t the same as mastering it, was it? No, just locking something away was more akin to just drinking enough to mask over pain, and, in Renji’s experience, you’d still be left with it in the morning. 

Though, ultimately, there weren’t that many things in Renji’s mental box, most of them got unpacked with the thought that the alternative had been much worse and that he’d done the best he could given the options. No regrets. 

“So how do you do that?” Renji asked. He was still holding the last of the articles to be filed, and he leaned a hip against the cabinet. “Master something like… a spider.”

“Or a… nue?” Nakamura returned, mocking Renji’s hesitation. “First, you have to be able to _say_ it, don’t you, boy? You must be able to name what you are. You need to be able to look the world in the eye and shout it out--call for it, ask for it—accept it completely.”

So it was the same, in a way. He had to be able to do with Zabimaru what he’d done with all the other choices in his life—live with them without any regrets, accept everything those decisions said about him, about who he was at the core.

But those things had been active choices. He could look back on his life and say, ‘I did this because of that,’ or ‘that wasn’t the best outcome, but it could have been so much worse.’ 

Had he made a decision like that about Zabimaru? Was there some moment in his celestial cycle where he said, ‘Yes, I am a demon of misfortune, that’s what I want to be more than anything.’

Maybe.

Maybe if whatever powers that be had asked him to decide between strength and weakness--he would have said, ‘give me strength, any kind, so I can fight.’ And, then, just because fate is a bastard, he was reborn in Inuzuri – a complete hellhole where every day was a battle for survival.

“So in all those books, when people say ‘master’ your zanpaktō, they’re really saying, ‘wrestle your own demons’?”

“ _Books_?” Nakamura sat straighter, his eyes widening. “You’ve already read more than the required text?”

Renji shrugged off his question with an embarrassed lift of his shoulder. “But that’s what you’re saying, though, right? To master a zanpaktō means understanding yourself. You don’t have to subdue and conquer, so much as accept and embrace.”

“Depends on the zanpaktō and its wielder,” Nakamura said. “Some people do need to conquer their zanpaktō, because it represents something about themselves that’s potentially out of control, dangerous. Look,” he said, pointing to where Kuroi no Kumo hung, “There is a part of me that’s poisonous. If that isn’t reined in—“

Renji nodded, when sensei didn’t offer any more. “Yeah, I think I get it. There’s a balance. You have to know and accept what you’re capable of—all of it—but hold back the darkness, the murderous rage, the thing that would destroy everyone and everything just for the fun of it, for the joy of finally being the one with all the power.”

“Ah,” Nakamura said, his eyebrows high on his forehead. “So you _do_ have a few demons.”

“Yeah,” Renji said, turning back to his work. “You could say.”

**Author's Note:**

> It occurs to me that another "alternative" part of this alternate universe is the timing of Renji's tattoos. In both the Anime and Manga, he's already got the beginnings of his eyebrow/forehead tattoos when he interupts Rukia's interview with the Kuchikis. Here, of course, he's only gotten them once she's already gone and graduated. My reasoning here is that, in this universe, Renji is more conscious of the possilbe restrictions against tattoos at Academy and likely wouldn't have gotten these at all if he hadn't been on a weekend binge with the 11th over the summer. There may have to be a new scene with the headmaster in this universe, since he'd be VERY concerned that Renji is still adding to his body art (continued yakuza connection??). Perhaps I can work what Renji's learning here into that scene. So far the headmaster has been able to shame Renji about his ink, perhaps things are about to change...


End file.
